Israel Ready to Invade Gaza If Cease-Fire Efforts Fail

An Israeli soldier stands on top of his tank at an Israeli army deployment area near the Israel-Gaza Strip border. Photgrapher: Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Israeli ground forces are poised to
invade the Gaza Strip for the first time in almost four years
amid efforts by Egypt and Turkey to help end exchanges of fire
that have killed 96 Palestinians and three Israelis.

The decision whether to expand the Gaza operation or reach
a cease-fire agreement “is rapidly approaching, and is a matter
of hours, not even days,” Israeli Finance Minister Yuval
Steinitz said in an interview today on Army Radio.

Air-raid sirens sounded twice in Tel Aviv yesterday as four
rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense
system. A rocket was fired at Jerusalem on Nov. 16, the first
such attack in decades. At least 1,100 missiles, rockets and
mortars have been fired at Israel since Nov. 14, according to
the Israel Defense Forces. About 15,000 have been launched from
Gaza in the past 11 years.

The escalating conflict between Israel and the Islamist
Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, threatens a
region still unbalanced after a wave of popular uprisings last
year. Hamas is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S.
and the European Union.

Hamas is “mildly optimistic” about efforts to broker a
cease-fire with Israel, Nabil Shaath, a senior adviser to
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said today in an
interview. “They think negotiations are going seriously, but
it’s difficult to predict when that will come to fruition,” he
said, speaking in the north Sinai town of el-Arish.

‘Immediate Cease-Fire’

There has been a drop in the number of rockets fired, with
only about 20 so far today, said Avital Leibovich, an Israeli
army spokeswoman. “Rocket launching ability has been severely
damaged,” she said.

The Israeli strikes killed 19 Palestinians in Gaza
yesterday, including 11 members of an extended family by the
name of Al-Dalou, said Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman for the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. At least half of the Palestinians
killed since the airstrikes started last week were civilians,
including women and children, he said. Three Israeli citizens
were killed by Gaza rockets on Nov. 15.

“We will continue to act, to attack and perhaps even to
intensify the operation,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said
yesterday, according to an e-mailed statement. “If there is a
need, we won’t hesitate to undertake ground maneuvers.”

Stocks Recover

Israeli stocks rose for a second day on bets international
mediation will lead to a cease-fire. The TA-25 index advanced
0.2 percent at midday in Tel Aviv. Oil extended gains on concern
that conflict in the Middle East may disrupt supplies, adding
1.3 percent to $87.78 a barrel at 10 a.m. in London. Egypt’s
benchmark stock index rose 0.2 percent, paring a slump of 3.3
percent yesterday that was the biggest in more than four months.

An Israeli official arrived at Cairo airport yesterday, an
Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment to the media.
The arrival came as Egypt’s President Mohamed Mursi and Turkey’s
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushed to secure a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.

“Israel is also aware of problems and possible threats
that might come from Jordan, which has a large Palestinian
population, and Syria regarding the Golan Heights,” said Nihat
Ali Ozcan, a terrorism analyst at the Economic Policy Research
Foundation in Ankara. “Israel might be trying to address the
existing problem first before dealing with wider regional
problems.”

Hamas Demands

Hamas is demanding that Israel lift its blockade of Gaza
and end targeted killings of its leaders in return for a cease-fire, Israel’s Army Radio reported, citing reports from Cairo.

“I strongly urge the parties to cooperate with all efforts
led by Egypt to reach an immediate cease-fire,” United Nations
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement released
yesterday in New York. “I am heading to the region to appeal
personally for ending the violence and contribute to ongoing
efforts to that end.”

Israel says its military goal is to make Palestinians in
Gaza stop firing the rockets that threaten 4.5 million people,
or half the population of the country, Israeli ambassador to the
U.K. Daniel Taub told Bloomberg Television today.

“Let’s understand what the precipitating event was that
was causing the crisis, and that was an ever-escalating number
of missiles,” U.S. President Barack Obama said at a press
conference in Bangkok, where he began a three-nation trip. “We
will continue to support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Hamas said the Israeli actions won’t stop it from
operating.

People ‘United’

“The government and the Palestinian people are united to
confront the aggression,” it said in an e-mailed statement.
“It is the right of Palestinian people and the government to
resist the occupation.”

Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket defense system, which
targets projectiles heading toward populated areas, has
intercepted 302 of those fired from Gaza toward populated areas,
according to the Israeli army. Israeli fighter jets hit about
150 targets in Gaza yesterday, bringing the number of airstrikes
over the past four days to 1,350, an army spokesman said,
speaking on condition of anonymity in compliance with military
rules.

Israeli officials said hackers have sought to bring down
government websites. Israeli websites have been hit by 44
million cyber-attacks since the Gaza operation started Nov. 14,
all but one of which were stopped, Steinitz told reporters in
Jerusalem.

Tank Deployment

World leaders including Obama have called for an end to the
conflict before it escalates. Israel deployed tanks near the
border, threatening the first ground invasion of Gaza since an
assault that began in December 2008 and left more than 1,100
Palestinians and 12 Israelis dead.

Egypt is trying with Turkey, Arab nations and the world’s
leading powers, such as the U.S., France and Britain, to get a
cease-fire agreement from both sides, Mursi said yesterday.

In phone conversations with Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham
Qandil and her counterparts in France, Qatar and Turkey,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “underscored Israel’s right
to self-defense” and “the urgent need for all leaders with
influence to use it to seek an immediate de-escalation of
tensions,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Loss of Support

Israel risks losing “a lot of international support and
sympathy” if it mounts a ground invasion to stop the rocket
attacks, U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague told Sky News
television.

The standoff in Gaza is putting pressure on Arab leaders
such as Mursi, who came to power after an uprising that ousted
U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak last year and has pledged stronger
support for Palestinians. Tens of thousands have rallied in
Cairo to protest the Israeli attacks, and there were similar
demonstrations in Turkey, Iran and other Islamic countries.

Abbas, whose Fatah group rules in the West Bank, has said
he’ll seek to upgrade Palestinian diplomatic status at the UN
later this month to “non-member observer state” in the 193-member General Assembly. Abbas failed last year to secure
approval in the 15-member Security Council for statehood
recognition after opposition from the U.S.

‘No More Missiles’

Israeli leaders say the Palestinian bid is a unilateral
step to obtain statehood without negotiating and will be used to
try to isolate Israel diplomatically.

“If we see a further escalation of the situation in Gaza,
then the likelihood of us getting onto any two-state solution is
pushed further in the future,” Obama said. “It starts with no
more missiles fired into Israel’s territory.”

The Arab League urged its member nations to end
normalization of relations with Israel because of the Israeli
air offensive in Gaza, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil el-Arabi said in a statement after the group’s meeting in Cairo.

The league has endorsed the so-called Arab Peace
Initiative, which was originally proposed in 2002. It offers to
normalize relations between Israel and all Arab states in
exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from territories
Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War, including the West
Bank, east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.
Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab League members that have full
diplomatic relations with Israel.

Hamas may want to prolong the conflict for a while “to
keep earning more popular support among the Arab peoples and
Arab leaders,” said As’ad Abu Sharkh, a political science
professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City.

The group probably isn’t interested in a “fragile” cease-fire that could be violated, Abu Sharkh said. Instead, it seeks
“a long-term truce with guarantees that Israel won’t violate it
again,” so that Palestinians can rebuild Gaza, he said.